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User blog:Mothman Historian/Is Mothman Biologically Possible?!
West Virginia's Mothman is said to be a humanoid creature with glowing red eyes, he is Typically 7ft tall with 10 to 15ft wingspan and able to travel 100mph. The question I want to know Is.. Is this biologically possible? So First of all, Does Mothman have feathers? Sometimes hes described with them and bird wings don't really seem to make sense without them. As we are currently, humans cannot grow feathers. We do not have the right genetic structure for it. Keratin is a compound made with proteins and it is what hair, finger nails and bird feathers are made out of. Since we are warm blooded mammals like birds are, and we develop Keratin in our system, yes it could be possible for humans to grow feathers, although that is incredibly unlikely since we evolved from a different path, a completely different branch on the tree of life. Birds are avian, dinosaurs and humans are simians, primates. We have never needed feathers as we are ground walkers. Our bones are solid where as birds are hollow, our structure is rugged while theirs is fragile which makes them lighter. So to fly, MothMan would have to be a strange bird humanoid that has all the quality of a bird needed for flight such as hollow bones and strong pectoral muscles but resembles the shape of a man in some way, and yes he'd probably need to have feathers. Now lets talk about flight. The bodies of birds are adapted for flying. As I said, many of a bird's bones are hollow which makes birds' bodies lightweight. Birds' light rigid skeleton and fast digestion favors flying. Also, Flying birds have large chest muscles that move the wings. Birds have feathers that help them fly and Tails that helps birds direct the flight. Mothman but he does not have a tail based on witness sightings and therefore cannot direct flight. This would make his flying very difficult and probably not allow him to go 100 mph. It would probably be impossible for him to keep up with, and chase, cars like in the sightings if he couldn't direct flight. The Average weight of a 7ft tall man is 250 pounds. Can his 10 to 15ft wings carry that? The Heaviest Flying Bird that still exists today is a Kori Bustard , male average of 35 pounds but can reach up to 44 pounds. They are 4 ft,11 inch tall on average with 9 ft wingspan. They spend most time on the ground and only rarely fly. Which doesn't sound good for the Using the 44 pound 9ft wingspan Kori's as a starting point, The 250 pound Mothman would have a need for like 5.7 times the wingspan of the Kori. 44 times 5.7 equal 250.8 and 9 times 5.7 equals 51.3. So, just using the ratio, a 250 pound Mothman would need 51ft wings? I probably did that wrong. First, the massive wings would add its own weight, and would require strong flight muscles that humans do not have, the weight of which would also need to be added. but Math is hard so lets try using a different starting point of a non living flying creatures to get a closer size comparison. The Closest to Human Size Flying Dead Thing that I could find is the Quetzalcoatlus , if we go by the latest estimates, it has an average wingspan of 33 to 36 ft and the creatures weight is around 440 to 550 pounds. So if we take the 440 small sized Quetzalcoatlus and cut it in half by dividing it by 2 we have a 220 pound creature with 16.5ft wingspan or a 'small mothman' and a 275 pound creature with 18ft wingspan or 'big mothman' but I don't know if that's capable of flight especially since they're still unclear on if the Quetzalcoatlus can fly and if so, how fast. Some researchers have suggested that these animals employed slow, soaring flight, while others have concluded that their flight was fast and dynamic. In 2010, Donald Henderson argued that the mass had been underestimated, even the highest estimates, and that it was too massive to have achieved powered flight. Henderson argued that it may have been flightless. However, most other flight capability estimates have disagreed with Henderson's research, suggesting instead an animal superbly adapted to long-range, extended flight. In 2010, Professor Mike Habib and Paleontologist Mark Witton undertook further investigation into the claims of flightlessness in large pterosaurs. After factoring wingspan, body weight, and aerodynamics, a computer model led them to conclude that the smaller Quetzalcoatlus was capable of flight "up to 80 miles an hour for 7 to 10 days at altitudes of 15,000 feet". Mike Habib further suggested a maximum flight range of 8,000 to 12,000 miles for bigger Quetzalcoatlus. Anatomical study of the quetzalcoatlus and other large pterosaur forelimbs show a higher degree of robustness than would be expected if they were purely quadrupedal. Habib believes that large pterosaurs most likely utilized a short burst of powered flight in order to then transition to thermal soaring. So, in other words, It either couldn't fly or it glided using its strong forelimbs to create short burst of flight. The Mothman could very well have muscular arms but Its flight pattern is the complete opposite of short bursts, Its reported by witnesses to move like a helicopter, straight up, only flapping its wings for take off and not flapping in flight. But remember that our Mothman half as small as the Quetzalcoatlus. Could it be more likely to be able to fly and even travel faster? Maybe up to 100 miles per hour? One last starting point for comparison. The Largest Dead Bird that I could find is the Pelagornis sandersi is a species of extinct flying bird discovered in 2014 with a wingspan estimated to be between 20 and 24 ft. If the larger estimated wingspan holds true, this makes it the largest flying bird yet discovered. Some scientists expressed surprise at the idea that this species could fly at all, given that, at between 48 and 88 pounds, it would be considered too heavy by the predominant theory of the mechanism by which birds fly. Dan Ksepka, who discovered the new species, thinks it was able to fly in part because of its relatively small body and long wingspan because it, like the albatross, spent much of its time over the ocean, where the bird relied on wind currents rising up from the ocean to keep it aloft. Okay, once again we have something using clever tricks like currents or short burst of powered flight to be able to even fly, making all of this seem like creatures built like this shouldn't be able to fly, making of all this being possible seem shaky, then adding the 100 mph flight and traveling all across the world, it makes it seem very unlikely. Not to mention that if Mothman had the hollow bones and chest muscle strength necessary and was always in a flight position, hes look less and less like a humanoid and more and more like a bird. If you take a human being and adapt it for flight, giving it the attributes of a bird, after a while you'll most likely just end up with a bird. Also I'm pretty sure the fact that these creatures existed in prehistoric times affects the flight in comparison to modern day oxygen and atmosphere. The 44 pound Kori Bustard is probably the biggest flying bird in modern times for a reason. The fact that we don't see flight capable birds as heavy as humans probably tells us that biological process and the present concentration of oxygen in our atmosphere precludes the kind of 'energy density' that would allow a bird as heavy as a human to be capable of flying. Lastly, the strange flight pattern described by witnesses always mention Mothman going 'straight up like a helicopter' and only flapping for take off. Taking the pattern into account and comparing these other creatures It does not seem biologically possible but who knows. Maybe someone with better Math and science skills can figure this out. I've a huge fan of Mothman, It would be awesome if he was possible or if he was real but it doesn't seem that way. Everyone in the the comment section I really need to know, Any scientists, biologists or people who are good at math please tell me, Can a 7ft tall, 250 pound man fly? If so, what would his wingspan need to be and what weight would be added by the wings? Could he fly 100mph? Is Mothman Biologically Possible!? Category:Blog posts